When Greg learned of the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and his son Nick's alleged involvement, the news struck a painfully familiar chord.
It wasn't the violence that resonated, but rather the pain and desperation that comes with loving a family member suffering from an illness that the best efforts and intentions alone cannot cure.
Greg has an adult son who, like Nick Reiner, has had a long and difficult struggle with addiction.
“It just hits close to home,” said Greg, president of Anonymous Familiesa national support program for friends and family of people with addiction. (In accordance with the organization's member anonymity policy, The Times is not revealing Greg's last name.)
“It's so horrible to be a parent or loved one of someone who struggles with [addiction]because you can't find any sense in this,” he said. “You can't find a way to help them.”
Every family's experience is different, and the big picture is almost always more complicated than it appears from the outside. Public details about the Reiner family's private struggles are relatively few.
But some parts of his story are probably recognizable to the millions of American families affected by addiction.
“This is really shining a light on something that's happening in homes across the country,” said Emily Feinstein, executive vice president of the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction.
Over the years, Nick Reiner, 32, and his parents publicly discussed his years-long struggle with drug use, which included periods of homelessness and multiple stints in rehab.
Most recently, he lived in a guest house on his parents' property in Brentwood. family friends he told the Times that Michele Singer Reiner had become increasingly concerned about Nick's mental health in recent weeks.
The couple was found dead in their home on Sunday afternoon. Los Angeles police officers arrested Nick hours later. On Tuesday he was charged with the murder. He is currently being held without bail and has been placed under special supervision due to a possible suicide risk, a law enforcement official told The Times.
Substance use experts warned against drawing a direct line between addiction and violence.
“Addiction or mental health issues never excuse a horrific act of violence like this, and these types of acts are not a direct result or feature of addiction in general,” said Zac Jones, executive director of Beit T'Shuvah, a nonprofit addiction treatment center based in Los Angeles.
The circumstances surrounding the Reiners' much-publicized deaths are far from ordinary. The fact that addiction has affected your family is not.
Nearly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. have personally experienced addiction. a 2023 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Two thirds of Americans have a family member with the disease, a proportion that is similar among rural, urban and suburban residents, and among black, Latino and white respondents.
“Substance use disorders and addiction do not discriminate,” Jones said. “It affects everyone, from the highest of the highest [socioeconomic status] to people experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. … There is no solution that can be bought.”
During interviews for the 2015 film “Becoming Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical film directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Nick Reiner, the family told reporters that Nick, then in his early 20s, had been to rehab about 18 times since his teens. Nick Reiner has also spoken publicly about his heroin use as a teenager.
These cycles of rehabilitation and relapse are common, experts said. A 2019 study found that it was necessary an average of five recovery attempts to effectively stop using and maintain sobriety, although the authors noted that many respondents reported 10 or more attempts.
Many families empty their savings in search of a cure, Feinstein said. Even those with abundant resources often end up in an equally desperate cycle.
“Unfortunately, the system in place to treat people does not address the complexity or intensity of the disease, and in most cases, it is very difficult to find an effective, evidence-based treatment,” Feinstein said. “No matter how much money you have, it doesn't guarantee a better outcome.”
Addiction is a complex disorder with intertwined roots in genetics, biology, and environmental triggers.
Repeated drug use, especially in adolescence and early adulthood, when the brain is still developing, physically alters the circuits that governs reward and motivation.
On top of that, mental health conditions, trauma, and other co-occurring factors mean that no two cases of substance abuse disorders are exactly the same.
For starters, there aren't enough quality rehabilitation programs, experts said, and even an effective program to which one patient responds successfully may not work at all for another person.
“There's always the risk of relapse. That can be hard to process,” Greg said.
Families Anonymous advises its members to accept the “Three Cs” of a loved one's addiction. Greg said: You didn't cause it, you can't cure it, and you can't control it.
“Good, loving families, people who care, deal with this problem the same way,” he said. “This is very common, but people don't really talk about it, especially parents, for fear of being judged.”
After the murders, a family friend he told the Times that they had “never met a family as devoted to a child” as Rob and Michele Reiner, and that the couple “did everything for Nick. Every treatment program, therapy session, and they repeatedly put their lives aside to save Nick's.”
But the painful thing is that devotion alone cannot cure a chronic and complex illness.
“If you could love someone into sobriety, recovery and remission from their psychiatric problems, then we would have a lot fewer clients here,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, love is not enough. It is certainly part of the solution, but it is not enough.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, help is available. Call 988 to connect with trained mental health counselors or text “HOME” to 741741 in the US and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
Jake Reiner, Nick Reiner, Romy Reiner, Michele Singer Reiner and Rob Reiner attend the pop-up grand opening of Four Sixes Ranch Steakhouse at Wynn Las Vegas on September 14, 2024.
(Denise Truscello/Getty Images for Wynn Las Vegas)
